Harrogate Borough Council has been named a leader in digital governance after once again taking first place for UK local government in the latest Sitemorse quarterly INDEX.The Sitemorse INDEX reviews sites, scoring and ranking them based on optimisation, experience, compliance and factors such as loading speed and accessibility.
Harrogate Borough Council took first place with an overall score of 9.4 out of 10, representing a very high standard of optimization, user experience and content delivery. The council took first place for accessibility, HTML, performance, email and metadata and was near the top of the table for functionality. However, it also scored 0 out of 10 for brand, indicating that there are improvements that could be made which would allow the council to further secure its top-level placement.
While Harrogate retained the top spot, the leaders in the field continue to deliver to a very high standard – with the top four sites scoring over 9 out of 10 (representing excellent results) and four of the top ten improving their score by more than 0.5 points since Q1 2018.
Aberdeen City Council displayed the greatest improvement in the INDEX, increasing its score from 2.59 to 2.93 and climbing 283 places, having notably boosted the standard of accessibility, HTML and metadata.
UK local government is one of the strongest performing fields reviewed by the Sitemorse INDEX. All top ten sites outperform the leaders for UK central government, UK higher education and US airlines.
The results of the INDEX were based on a total of over 115m tests on public pages carried out in April 2018. Every page on every site surveyed was subjected to over 1,600 unique tests, checks and measures each.
The Sitemorse INDEX report is carried out by Sitemorse, which helps clients to continuously and automatically monitor for issues relating to optimisation, experience and compliance (including SEO and accessibility) on public and private pages. The findings of the latest report, for Q2 2018, will be released over the course of May 2018. The full results for UK local government can be found here: https://sitemorse.com/index/report.html?rt=1413&key=033a98ad
About the Sitemorse INDEX
Since 2002, the Sitemorse INDEX has provided an independent industry standard for benchmarking digital governance. Sites are reviewed and scored based on some 1,600 tests, checks and measures per page, identifying actions that improve optimisation, experience and compliance. Since its inception, it has been the fundamental measure of digital capability for organisations that strive for online excellence.
Scoring highly typically reflects those that have strong digital leadership and understand the importance of providing the best visitor experience possible – and it reflects positively on the entire organisation’s operations and branding.
About Sitemorse
Sitemorse (www.Sitemorse.com) helps organizations to efficiently drive improved user experience, ensuring that content is always optimised and that compliance requirements are always met. With clients in every corner of the world, Sitemorse (www.Sitemorse.com) sets out to remove endless reporting from Digital Governance and to instead provide actionable insights so that major changes can be made quickly.